


clean sweep

by CareyElizabeth



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Winter Olympics AU, clarke plays hockey, god knows why but lexa is a curler, honestly I have no idea how this whole thing happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-22 19:05:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13770585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CareyElizabeth/pseuds/CareyElizabeth
Summary: ‘They’re literally giving out 110,000 condoms in the athletes’ village. The only thing that unites us is that we’re all full of adrenaline and horny as fuck.’‘What happened to sportsmanship? The Olympic spirit? Citius altius fortius?’‘Yeah, well, harder and faster is exactly what I’m hoping for.’‘Did you just wilfully mistranslate the Olympic motto to make a dirty joke?’(lexa is a curler, clarke plays hockey, take a wild guess)





	clean sweep

For Clarke Griffin, arriving at the Winter Olympics had been the proudest moment of her life. Four years of college, the awards on her mom’s mantel, the injury that kept her out of the last Games, had all led to this: representing her country, wearing the stars and stripes on everything from her jersey to the official-issue thermal underwear, head held high. She had made it, and nothing could touch her now.

She had not expected her Olympics to involve the feeling of wishing that the ground would swallow her up as quickly and quietly as possible. 

‘Octavia.’ It shouldn’t have been possible for her teeth to be both gritted and chattering, but that was what appeared to be happening. ‘We are literally surrounded by ice, so you should be able to muster some fucking chill from  _ somewhere.’  _

‘Sorry,’ gulped Octavia, wiping away tears. ‘It’s just so funny.’

‘They are  _ professional athletes.’ _

‘They keep yelling “harder” at the tops of their voices and I can’t help it, Clarke, it just gets me.’

‘Get your mind out of the gutter.’

‘They’re literally giving out 110,000 condoms in the athletes’ village. The only thing that unites us is that we’re all full of adrenaline and horny as fuck.’

‘What happened to sportsmanship? The Olympic spirit?  _ Citius altius fortius?’ _

‘Yeah, well, harder and faster is exactly what I’m hoping for.’

‘Did you just wilfully mistranslate the Olympic motto to make a dirty joke?’

‘Sue me.' Octavia pointed down at the rinks below them, as accusingly as she could while wearing mittens. ‘Stop talking during play. These are professional athletes, Clarke. Show some respect.’

‘You are unbelievable.’

‘I just really want to focus on the ice bowling.’

_ ‘Curling  _ \- you know what, doesn’t matter.’ Clarke huffed and sank down further into her seat, jamming her hands into her armpits. She never felt the cold when she was on the ice herself, but spectating was a different story. The head coach had encouraged the team to take advantage of the slower early days of the Games, allowing them to enjoy the rare opportunity to take in everything a multi-sport event had to offer, which was currently consisting of the four American women being beaten 5-2 by a team of softly-spoken but ruthless Swedes. 

‘Would it help if we started a chant or something?’

‘I think it’s too late.’

‘Oh.’ Octavia paused and pouted. ‘I’m bored.’

‘How do you manage to focus for an entire hockey game when you have the attention span of a five-year-old child?’

‘The  _ New York Times  _ called me a wunderkind.’

‘Oh, right, that explains it.’ There were four of the long curling rinks in the arena - 146 feet or 44.5 meters long, as the announcer had proudly informed them in three languages - and the other end looked livelier. ‘Let’s move down there.’

‘Be honest, we’re both scared of those cheerleaders in the middle section.’

‘We’ll go round behind them. Come on.’

Clarke led the way along the back of the stands to the far side, finding a pair of empty seats facing straight down the final rink. On the ice below them was a huddle of dejected-looking Norwegians and a single Canadian with her back to them all, brush held out in front of her to demonstrate a line to her teammates at the other end of the ice.  _ Woods - Canada. _

The score was already 8-3. ‘Clarke, this is even worse.’

‘No, wait, I like the look of this one.’

The woman in the red jacket at the far end -  _ Hunter - Canada _ according to the scoreboard - sent down her final stone and crouched to watch it go, yelling commands to the last two Canadians with a ferocity that Clarke normally associated with actual life or death situations. Woods called it in from the front, calm but clinical, until the stone was nestled exactly where they wanted it.

‘That’s it,’ said Octavia decisively. ‘Norway are fucked.’

Clarke wasn’t listening. At first, that was because Hunter had come sliding nonchalantly down the ice to consult the rest of her team, and Clarke had not expected her to look like a Valkyrie ice maiden. But then it was because Woods finally turned around to explain a shot and Clarke had simply not expected anyone to look like that, ever. 

‘Holy shit,’ said Octavia quietly, beside her. ‘Those two are way too hot to be curlers. They must be in disguise. Like in Miss Congeniality.’

She was  _ beautiful.  _ Not just her face, although it wasn’t as though her uniform gave much away about her body; not just the elegant angles of her bone structure, or the perfect line of her jaw, or the softness of her lips and eyes - it was her confidence, the way she stood, the clean, assured way she moved. She was going to win, and she knew it. 

‘Holy shit,’ agreed Clarke. Norway was not the only thing that was fucked. 

Woods slid up the ice to close out the game - slid  _ backwards,  _ somehow managing to make those ridiculous shoes look effortlessly cool - and even from 146 feet away, Clarke could feel an intensity in her gaze that almost scorched the ice. Hunter had taken her place at the foot of the rink and together they called in one stone, then another, a brilliant shot that left them 10-3 victors. Brief handshakes all round, gloves and gear collected from the side of the rink, and the Canadian goddesses disappeared back to the locker room. No, not disappeared.  _ Glided. Soared,  _ transported on a cloud of their own majesty and magnificence... 

‘Earth to Griff.’

Clarke jolted back in her seat. ‘What? Yes. I’m still here.’

‘You want to talk about the fact that you’ve pretty much been drooling for the last ten minutes?’

‘No I haven’t.’

‘Maybe not  _ actually,  _ but you’ve been staring at the Canadian captain non-stop. Like, unblinking. What do you think she thought when she saw you?’

‘She didn’t see me!’

‘How would you know that unless you’d been watching her literally the whole time?’ Octavia punched her on the arm smugly. ‘No judgment, she’s absolutely banging. Wanna go see if we can say hi?’ 

Clarke pulled her ear-flaps down, to disguise the fact that her face was one large blush, and tried to sound as nonchalant as the curlers had looked. ‘No hurry. We’re basically coworkers for the next two weeks. I’m sure we’ll bump into them.’

 

***

 

Accidentally bumping into someone in the Olympic Village was harder than Clarke had expected.

‘How are there so many Canadians?’ she hissed to Octavia as the cafeteria was inundated with yet another forest of maple leaf jackets. ‘They’re everywhere. I mean, this has to be a sizeable percentage of the population.’

‘It’s almost like they’re famously good at winter sports. You know, up there in the frozen north.’

‘Yeah, well. Shut up.’ Clarke spotted a headful of brown hair and shot upright like a meerkat, only to sit back disappointed as it turned out to belong to a speed skater. ‘Seriously, this is ridiculous. How many athletes at this Games again?’

Octavia rolled her eyes and helped herself to Clarke’s yogurt. ‘Only about 3000. Stop me if I’m going too fast here but you could, I don’t know, ask one of the moose-fanciers if they know her?’

‘How are  _ you  _ suddenly the rational one?’

‘Since you started thinking with your hockey stick.’

‘Ha ha.’ 

‘Did I say hockey stick? I meant lady boner.’

‘That much was clear, thank you.’ Clarke took the yogurt back. ‘They have to eat, right? To keep up their strength for all that sweeping.’

‘The captain doesn’t sweep,’ pointed out Octavia. ‘She just stands at the end and barks orders, which I’m pretty sure you were enjoying. But I’m sure she can still -’ audible pause for effect ‘- sweep  _ you  _ off your feet.’

Clarke sneered at her unconvincingly. ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. But anyway, she’s bound to come in here sometime.’

‘You can’t just camp in here for the entire rest of the Olympics. We do sports too, remember?’

‘Right.’

It wasn’t like Clarke was totally unprepared, but the official athlete page on the Olympic website had been only semi-helpful. Clarke now knew that  _ Woods - Canada  _ was really Alexandra-known-as-Lexa, that she was 165cm in height, that she had started curling at the age of four and that she somehow managed to look hot even in the horrendous profile photos the IOC forced them to submit. What she didn’t know was how to track her down in a way that wasn’t creepy to the point of stalking.

‘Yeah, because that’s exactly what you’re doing,’ pointed out Octavia that night, as Clarke didn’t quite manage to slam her laptop closed fast enough. ‘You’re researching her. Like an FBI agent, or a serial killer, or - oh yeah - a stalker.’

‘It’s all public domain,’ argued Clarke weakly, flipping the lid open again. ‘Just, you know. Google and stuff. She’s kind of a badass.’

‘She’s a fucking curler. That’s literally not possible.’

‘Four years ago she was a nineteen-year-old college student, and the Canadian captain had to pull out with an injury right before trials -’

‘I call bullshit. What kind of injury are you gonna get playing lawn bowls on ice?’

‘Tendonitis of the lower back, apparently. Anyway, she - Lexa - got drafted in to replace her, and ended up captaining them to gold. Aged nineteen. Badass.’ 

‘Just give me a second to get excited.’ Octavia held up a finger for silence, made a concentrating face, and lowered it. ‘Nope. Still not excited.’

‘Octaviaaa.’

‘Claaarke. It’s not my fault. Curling is just so not a real sport.’

‘Fine.’ Clarke swept off to the bathroom in what she hoped was a scornful, dignified manner. ‘I’ll find her myself.’

‘Stalker.’

‘I am gonna check you so hard in practice tomorrow.’

 

***

 

The pleasant prospect of sending Octavia flying into the boards was ruined the next morning by the polite knock of the woman from the anti-doping agency. 

‘Random drugs test,’ she announced, more enthusiastic than someone had any right to be when their job was to watch people urinate. ‘Griffin, C., USA? Do you have your athlete pass?’

‘Yeah. Um, our scheduled practice slot starts in half an hour so is there any way -’

‘I’m sure this won’t take long. That is, if you’ve been keeping properly hydrated!’ 

She winked. Clarke died inside.

After telling Octavia to go ahead without her and dutifully providing her samples, Clarke was unsurprisingly late. She ran down the first flight of stairs before imagining herself at the bottom with a broken leg and slowing to a sedate walk, but she still made it to the shuttle stop just in time to hurtle through the closing doors of the bus to the ice complex. The bus was full, a riot of colored jackets from the yellow of the Germans to the green of Hungary, and Clarke glanced hopefully over the large Canadian contingent beside her as she got her breath back. Still nothing. 

‘You’re Clarke Griffin, right?’

Well, fuck.

Clarke blinked, then blinked again, wondering if the secret to Lexa Woods’s success was that she genuinely was a goddess who could come and go at will. ‘What?’

‘Sorry, I saw you from behind Lincoln.’ The Canadian nodded up at the huge man beside her, who had obviously been blocking Clarke’s view. ‘But you are, right? Clarke Griffin?’

Clarke had been so worried about accidentally revealing how much she knew about Lexa, courtesy of Google, that she had completely failed to consider this turn of events. ‘Um. Yes.’

‘You don’t sound sure.’

‘I am sure. Very sure. Sorry, I was...you know who I am?’

‘I grew up in a tiny town in Canada. Hockey was our religion.’ She was  _ smirking.  _ Oh, that was dangerous. ‘It’s just, my little brother will be glued to every game you play. I don’t have anything on me right now, but would you sign something for him?’

‘I’d love to.’ That came out easier; doing stuff for kids was always easy. ‘Really. I can pass it round the whole team if you’d like. Men too.’

Lexa looked taken aback and hesitated for the first time, half-turning. ‘I don’t want to put you all to any trouble -’

‘No!’ It almost came out as a yelp.  _ Don’t go.  _ ‘No, it’s no trouble. It’s a pleasure. Really, this happens way less than you’d think.’

Lexa smiled wryly. ‘Don’t play the lack-of-recognition game with a curler.’ 

‘You didn’t get a tiny bit of recognition for winning a gold medal?’

‘Interesting.’ 

‘What is?’

‘So you know who I am as well.’

Clarke stared, trapped by dancing eyes that could have been green or blue depending on the angle of the winter sunlight, until she was snapped out of it by half-falling into a Lithuanian ice dancer as the bus came to a halt. ‘This is my stop.’

Lexa was smirking again, just enough to catch Clarke’s breath a little bit, but there was a sincerity to it when she spoke. ‘I’ll see you around.’

‘Not if I see you first.’

And that, Clarke decided as she sprinted into the arena, was about as smooth as she could have hoped for under the circumstances. 

 

***

 

The schedule filled up. There was practice, and there was off-ice training, and visiting the physio and the masseuse, and making sure to eat right and get the prescribed ten hours of sleep. And there were the matches. Everyone knew - though no one said - that it would be them and Canada in the final, fighting for the gold medal like they always did, but the other nations were coming up and offering more of a test, greater opportunities to hone their play. Clarke and Octavia and their teammates studied videos, looked through their notes, prepared mentally as much as they worked on their skating and their bodies. 

‘The top half of their blueline is legit, but the back end is thin. Like, really thin. Look, her save percentage is .971, but sometimes there’s just no one in front of her.’

‘And it depends if they even  _ play  _ the top half against us. Might save them for the other games, chase the wins they know they can actually get.’

‘I’m sure there’s some kind of famous quote about overconfidence but I’m way too tired to think of it.’

‘We’re going to win,’ said Octavia, quietly certain. ‘I know we are.’

Clarke was still constantly on the lookout for Lexa, always hoping to see her around the village even though the hockey players spent less and less time out and about, and she kept an eye on the Canadian curling scores. They were predictably impressive. Clarke watched the little highlights clips of each game before she went to bed, wondering how Lexa never seemed hurried, or stressed, or even concerned when her opponent did something unexpected.  _ Chess on ice,  _ she’d seen it described, but it was as though Lexa saw it more like a crossword; a challenge, but one that wouldn’t fight back. She was always the one in control.

Talent, Clarke decided on the walk back from treatment. Talent, and vision, and just enough ego to go for the hard shot that might get two points instead of the easy shot that would score one. 

‘Hello, stranger.’ 

It was dark, and Clarke was exhausted, but she knew that voice straight away and her heart thumped so hard that it almost scared her. ‘Stranger yourself. I hear you’ve been busy.’

‘On and off. Medals to win, targets to meet, millions of people to impress. You know the drill.’ Lexa looked different today - hair down from its braid, spilling into smooth curls that shone under the streetlight and made Clarke’s fingers itch, a woollen hat with a bobble almost as big as her head. ‘Not coming from practice?’

Clarke shook her head. ‘Extra physio. I had a hip flexor strain a few months ago.’

‘I sympathize.’

‘My roommate doesn’t believe that curlers get injured.’

Lexa grinned. ‘She’s only half wrong, but you know. Cut me and I bleed universal healthcare.’

‘They always told us it was maple syrup.’

‘Only in Quebec.’

They stood there on the sidewalk, smiling at each other without talking, both somehow managing to forget that it was below freezing plus windchill until Clarke felt herself do an enormous full-body shiver and remembered to keep walking. ‘Hey, do you have something we could sign for your brother?’

‘Do you know, I completely forgot to look.’ Lexa didn’t look unduly concerned. ‘Next time.’

‘What if there isn’t a next time?’

‘There will be.’ There was that calm confidence again -  _ she was going to win, and she knew it. _ ‘I saw your match on Tuesday.’ 

‘What did you think?’

‘You’d have had a harder time of it if they’d actually played the top end of their roster.’

She was so on the money there that Clarke laughed out loud. ‘If you ever get sick of curling you should come be an analyst for us.’

‘I couldn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Self-respect. Self-preservation.’ That little smile was back, half-teasing, half-serious. It didn’t appear in competition, at least not in the highlights reels, but Clarke could never have made it up. ‘Let’s just say you don’t put maple syrup on apple pie.’

‘Oh, right. The Canadians would be angry with you?’

‘Canadians don’t get angry, they just get disappointed. And that’s way worse.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘You can’t possibly imagine.’ They’d been walking slowly, almost dawdling, but they’d nearly reached Clarke’s building. ‘Look, let me buy you a drink. Or dinner. Something to keep you on the hook for those autographs.’ 

‘Consider me hooked.’

 

***

 

‘I’m sorry, I have to ask.’

‘I know you do.’

‘How on God’s green earth does somebody actually become a professional curler?’

Lexa flexed her de-mittened fingers around a glass of something mulled and only mildly alcoholic that smelled like the Alps looked, savoring the warmth. She had beautiful hands, because of course she did. ‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask one.’

‘Come again?’

‘Not a lot of money in curling.’

‘Even when you’re...you?’

‘Even when you’re me. It’s effectively a hobby that got out of control.’

‘Then what’s your nine-to-five?’

‘I’m in law school.’

Clarke had to admit that that made perfect sense - the rink was her courtroom, opposing counsel was the stone she was trying to hit so hard it rolled out of the game, maybe the brush represented rhetoric or justice or something. Either way, it meant that she was dealing with a deadly combination of beauty, brains and exceptional hand-eye coordination. ‘Okay, let me rephrase. How does someone get into curling at all?’

‘Lack of alternatives.’

_ ‘Seriously,  _ Lexa.’

_ ‘Seriously,  _ Clarke.’ Her eyes were dancing again, but she relented. ‘I grew up in this tiny town in Western Ontario. Mining, logging, hunting, fishing, hockey. There was a sports bar and there was an ice rink and if you weren’t old enough to be in one you pretty much had to be in the other.’ She scrolled through her phone for a moment and showed Clarke a picture of the four curlers together, out of competition gear. ‘Anya - she’s the vice on the team - lived on my street. We went to school with Luna. And then after the last Olympics there were some relocations and retirements, and Anya found Tris for us from the club she played with in college.’ 

‘Seems to be working out pretty well.’

Lexa nodded. ‘Tris is the beginner, comparatively, so obviously she has to throw the first two stones and set us up. The Bible says so.’

‘What.’

‘Let she that is without sin cast the first stone.’

Clarke sat back, relieved, feeling the grin spread wide on her face. ‘You’re ridiculous.’

‘Training sessions can be really boring. You have to find the humor where you can.’ She smiled, relaxed and lovely. ‘So that was it. Hockey town, nothing else to do, everyone was on the ice in some form or another. Mine happened to be curling.’

‘Can you skate?’

‘Of course. Not like you, though.’

‘Did you ever play hockey?’

‘I was a figure skater.’

‘Please say there are pictures.’

‘Believe me, all evidence has been destroyed.’ Lexa looked at her thoughtfully, a weighty, intimate level of eye contact that should have been too much but wasn’t. Really wasn’t. ‘Okay, so I recognized you because I’m secretly a hockey nerd. How did you know who I was?’

She was at the Olympics, and she could be brave. ‘Because I saw you in your first match and I couldn’t take my eyes off you.’

‘That’s a good reason.’

‘Is it?’

There it was, challenge laid down, intentions declared; an opportunity for the curler to walk away, if she wanted to take it. But she didn’t, and Clarke honestly didn’t know if she’d expected her to. Lexa just watched her for a moment, with something playing at the corner of her mouth that promised trouble, until suddenly she drained her glass and took in the rest of Clarke with a flicker of those confusing eyes. ‘When’s your next day off?’

Clarke gulped. ‘Today. But it’s meant to be a recovery day so I couldn’t -’

‘Let me worry about that.’

 

***

 

‘Is this…’

‘Ssh.’

‘What, I don’t get to talk either?’

She felt Lexa smile against her neck. ‘Depends what you say.’

‘Is this a normal part of the Olympic experience?’

That earned her a darkling look and a thumb brushing across her nipple, feather-light and full of promise. ‘Not as far as I know.’

Clarke looked for a smart comeback and couldn’t find one because there were legs tangled with hers, and hands everywhere but where she wanted them, and she had to genuinely consider the possibility that this was how she died. Somewhere along the line she’d done enough good deeds to earn a naked girl above her and a talented tongue on her skin, and smiles that did things to her without their owner even trying. But it was also maddening because Lexa’s hair was long and lovely and just begging for fingertips to rake through it, and it turned out she had the kind of back muscles that made Clarke’s mouth water just looking. 

‘No touching,’ said Lexa, mock-stern, when Clarke succumbed to temptation. ‘You’re meant to be recovering. No exertion.’

‘You’re killing me, Woods.’

‘What a way to go, though.’ Lexa relaxed on top of her, gentling her, hands framing her face and foreheads just touching. ‘Let me do this for you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re the kind of girl who offers to get the entire US hockey program to sign autographs for someone she just met.’ 

‘Actually, I’ve only ever done that once.’ 

‘Because your coaches will kill me if I let you so much as break a sweat, and I’m meant to be winning the Olympics on Tuesday.’

‘I won’t tell if you won’t.’

‘Because I like you, and I want to make you feel it.’

Clarke half-surrendered at that one, but she still broke Lexa’s hold to take over and kiss her -  _ really  _ kiss her, probably slower and softer than was wise, but it was suddenly all she wanted to do. 

 

***

 

‘Tuesday,’ realized Clarke, once she caught her breath and remembered where they were and why. ‘That’s soon.’

‘Very.’

‘Are you nervous?’

Lexa was on her front, head pillowed on her arms and sheets only debatably covering her hips, and Clarke wasn’t complaining. ‘Of course.’

‘You never look it.’

‘I’m nervous  _ now.  _ I won’t be once it starts.’ 

‘Eye of the storm? I get that.’

‘Once it starts, it’s real. It’s just ice and granite and physics. I’m good at what I do, and I trust my teammates, and we can deal with anything, but until it starts there’s nothing to...anchor you. It’s too hypothetical.’

‘I thought lawyers loved hypotheticals.’

‘Easier to be hypothetical when there aren’t huge, solid lumps of rock involved.’

She went still, turned towards Clarke, hair spilling sweat-streaked over the white of the sheets, and after a moment Clarke rolled over to face her. ‘But that’s why we work so hard to get here. So that we can go into those games knowing how much we have to give. We know ourselves and our teammates inside out, we know how to exploit our strengths and avoid our weaknesses. That’s not hypothetical. That’s sport.’

‘You always know how much you can give,’ said Lexa quietly. ‘You just don’t know how much it’s going to take.’

 

***

 

The hockey team crushed the semifinal, dismantling Switzerland with a ruthlessness that felt both deeply exhilarating and semi-unsportsmanlike. Clarke scored twice, Octavia once, and they left the ice almost wishing they could go straight back out and play the final. It was a golden match in every way but the color of the medal on offer.

‘No, no, fucking  _ no.’ _

‘Fucking  _ yes,  _ Clarke, we fucking killed it!’ Only Octavia could end a game with more energy than she started. ‘The Canadians aren’t gonna know what’s hit them. I told you this would be our year.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Can I borrow your phone?’

‘Only if you’re about to throw it to the floor and use it to practice shooting.’

‘Mine’s out of battery and the curling final finished while we were out there.’ Clarke grabbed Octavia’s phone unceremoniously and didn’t breathe until she’d found the score, blinking at the numbers as her adrenaline-fogged brain struggled to process them.  _ 11-3.  _ They’d won. She’d won. Lexa had won, and she was a double Olympic gold medalist at twenty-three, and Clarke knew the sound of her laugh and how her skin felt and  _ oh god  _ what she tasted like. ‘I have to go.’ 

‘Clarke, if you’ve got the entire Olympic village to choose from and you’re banging a fucking _curler_ I swear to god -’

‘I’ll tell her you say congratulations.’

The adrenaline high wore off as she was on the shuttle bus to Lexa’s building. Theirs had been a night match, and the curling was long over - plenty of time for celebrations - but she found herself worrying Lexa would think she was presuming, pushing in on a night she had no claim to, and she almost stayed in her seat when the doors opened.

‘Hello, stranger.’

‘What the hell?’ Clarke stared at the girl leaning against on the wall beside the bus stop, and then smiled so hard her cheeks hurt. ‘That’s it. You’re psychic. That’s why you keep winning things.’

‘I knew when your match ended and I made an educated guess.’ Lexa stepped to close the gap and kissed her, open-mouthed and rapturous and sure. ‘Do you mind?’

‘The fact that you’re kissing me, or the fact that you won the Olympics literally hours ago and you came to meet my bus?’

‘Either. Except the winning the Olympics bit. That’s kind of a done deal.’ The newly-minted champion kissed her again and unzipped the outer layer of her jacket to pull out the medal, heavy and shining and indisputably, gloriously gold. ‘Want to try it on?’ 

‘Absolutely not.’

‘Hold it?’

‘No.’

‘This medal is gonna be handled by every fifth-grader at my old school from now until doomsday, you might as well break it in a little.’

‘I’m not superstitious, but only a crazy person would tempt fate by wearing another athlete’s gold medal.’

‘But it’s  _ pretty.’  _ She was irresistible like this, radiant and reckless, all the intensity of the match washed away by the sheer elation of knowing it had been worth it. ‘Suit yourself. I hear someone made the final.’

‘Conclusively.’

‘We should go somewhere warmer so you can tell me all about it.’

‘I’m telling you nothing,’ said Clarke firmly as they made for the beckoning lights of the lobby. ‘In fact, I don’t plan on  _ talking  _ to you at all.’

 

***

 

‘Thursday,’ sighed Lexa, sweat gleaming and pulse fluttering at the hollow of her throat. ‘Nervous?’

‘Of course.’ 

‘I can’t remember what I’m meant to say next.’

‘I’m surprised you can remember your own name to be honest.’ Clarke smirked and let Lexa pin her to the mattress in retaliation, competitive spirit not entirely satisfied by victory on the rink. ‘I am. We all are. But there’s so much belief this year, and that might make all the difference.’

‘You do know I want you to lose, right? With every fiber of my tree-hugging, syrup-drinking, beaver-loving Canadian being?’

‘You want to walk back the beaver thing?’

‘I said what I said.’

‘Mmm.’ Clarke rolled them over expertly, hips fitting together neat and perfect.  _ ‘Every  _ fiber of your being?’

‘Maybe  _ one  _ fiber wants you to win. Two. A handful. Enough that I wouldn’t be completely devastated if you did.’ Lexa sighed, hands wandering, breath raising goosebumps on Clarke’s cooling skin. ‘What have you done to me, Griffin? Wanting to win is the cornerstone of my existence.’

‘It’s called sharing, you might have learned about it in grade school.’

‘If our hockey teams don’t win, the entire Olympic delegation is formally exiled from Canada.’

‘I could cheer you up.’

‘You’d better.’

‘Greencard marriage.’

‘I’ll hold you to that.’

 

***

 

The final was louder than any match she’d ever played, the skating faster, every play against them cleaner and sharper than they’d encountered before. But the earlier games had prepared them, and the two teams were steel sharpening steel. Clarke almost forgot about the pressure as she got into it, rivalry and history falling away, nothing left but the pure satisfaction of skating hard and making good shots. 

They were into the second period when she picked Lexa out of the sea of Canadian flags. Clarke got switched off the ice during a lull, taking a moment to reset and refocus, and saw her as suddenly and clearly as if a spotlight had switched on and the rest of the arena had gone dark. 

Lexa saw her too and gave her a thumbs up, then a tilt of the head and a wink as she pinched her thumb and forefinger together.  _ Good luck, but not too much.  _

Clarke gestured at her jersey, American blue, and drew a circle in the air to take in Lexa’s Canadian red.  _ Seriously? _

_ Sorry,  _ Lexa mouthed, not looking very sorry, but then she held up a hand almost shyly like she was waving. Clarke squinted, and stood up, and leaned forward til she saw it. 

Lexa had Clarke’s jersey number written on her hand. 

It might have been a tiny thing, an insignificant thing, easy to do and easy to wipe away, but it  _ wasn’t.  _ If there was one thing Clarke had learned, it was that Lexa meant everything she did.

She barely remembered winning. The crowd was so loud that it just became noise, white noise, too much to take in properly. She wasn’t prepared for how tired she was, for how it hit her the second the game ended; all the days of competition, the months of training, all the years of wishing and hoping and striving ever since she was a little girl with a stick as long as her body. The anthem was a blur. The medal still felt like a dream.

But she remembered what happened after the immediate celebrations were over, when the friends and families gathered to meet them as they came streaming out of the locker room, and Clarke found herself in front of Lexa, proud and speechless and sticking out like the ghost at the feast in her red and white. The team celebrated around them and they just stood, both exhausted, both champions and knowing exactly what it took and exactly what it meant, until Lexa’s words tumbled out all at once. ‘I don’t forget things.’

‘You...What?’

‘Looking out something for you to autograph for Aden. I never  _ forgot _ to look, I just...didn’t look.’ It was still so loud she had to step closer to be heard. ‘Once I get your autograph, there goes my excuse.’

‘What excuse?!’

‘To keep seeing you.’

Clarke had never wanted to kiss someone so badly as she did then, and there was nothing stopping her except how utterly, bone-crushingly shattered she was. ‘How can you be so fucking smart and still think you need an excuse?’

But Lexa kissing her instead, that she could deal with. 


End file.
